My colleague, I see that you are right in the middle of your speech. Rather than cut you off in about a minute and a half, I thought I would let you take up right after question period. You will have a full three minutes then.

Mr. Speaker, Fanshawe College is an excellent community college located in my riding of London-Middlesex.

In September a team of their student chefs represented Canada at the 1996 International Culinary Olympics in Berlin. They competed against 30 teams from around the world and won a silver medal for Canada.

Ashley Millis. Congratulations to their coaches, Peter Greuel and Steven Evetts and to the project manager, Kirk Patterson.

These young people are a credit to themselves, to Fanshawe College, to the city of London and to Canada. Well done. We are very proud of you and we look forward to sampling your cooking in the near future.

Mr. Speaker, the municipality of Laterrière has just celebrated the 150th anniversary of its founding.

This celebration provided a great opportunity to showcase its natural, cultural and historical assets. Designed as a series of historical vignettes set in various locations throughout the municipality, the original play "La tournée folle du grand brûlé" brought part of its history back to life.

The celebrations ended October 6 with the blessing of a statue in honour of Laterrière's founder, Father Jean-Baptiste Honorat.

The municipality of Laterrière was hard hit by the Saguenay floods. Remembering its history reassures us about this courageous community's ability to meet this new challenge.

Mr. Speaker, the agriculture minister has yet again demonstrated that he has absolutely no direction for western Canadian grain farmers.

On the one hand he demonstrates solid support for the single desk monopoly of the Canadian Wheat Board by closing loopholes in the Customs Act while on the other allowing it to self-destruct by its lack of accountability and transparency.

This minister has shown he is prepared to prosecute farmers in order to prevent them from accessing niche markets that the board will not service. At the same time he allows the board to circumvent its own act by directing selected farmers to end users who pay huge bonuses outside the pooling system.

In my opinion, if a violation of the Canadian Wheat Board Act is punishable by jail for farmers, then so should the same punishment apply to wheat board officials.

But then, we have a Liberal government that protects criminals while ignoring the rights of its victims.

Mr. Speaker, yesterday while appearing before the finance committee the finance minister announced that the deficit for 1995-96 is $4.1 billion below the government's target of $32.7 billion.

The reason given for this is that government spending and interest charges were lower than expected, but the figures the minister released for employment insurance show another reason the deficit is lower than expected.

While the government has cut benefits for unemployed workers by $1.3 billion in 1995-96, the government is collecting $9 billion more than it is paying out in benefits. Most of this surplus will go to reducing the deficit.

This is not the government's money. It rightfully belongs to the 13 million workers who contributed to it. At a time when the unemployed are having a difficult time trying to make ends meet with reduced benefits it is cruel and unfair to make the deficit numbers look better by gouging unemployed workers.

Mr. Speaker, Tuesday marked the beginning of the first month-long Brome Lake duck festival in my riding of Brome-Missisquoi. Modelled after the great public fairs in southwestern France, this event attracts tourists at a traditionally quieter time of year.

This international gastronomic event, a local initiative, is a fine example of co-operation between France and Canada. It involves not only culinary exchanges between chefs from Gascony and Quebec, but also the promotion of Canada's excellent products overseas.

I wish to congratulate the festival president, Jacques Ouimette, for putting his heart and soul into creating an event of this magnitude around one of Brome-Missisquoi's main assets: its local products. I join with the people of Brome-Missisquoi in inviting Canadians to come to the Eastern Townships to attend the Brome Lake duck festival.

Mr. Speaker, Jeanette Dean of Saskatoon has been selected to receive the Canada Volunteer Award Certificate of Merit presented in

recognition of valuable voluntary contributions toward improving the health and social well-being of her fellow Canadians.

In 1987 Mrs. Dean retired from teaching at the Saskatoon School for the Deaf. She did not stop working, however. She joined the Saskatoon UNICEF chairing two committees. She was involved with no less than three Canadian Federation of University Women clubs, did volunteer teaching for the deaf, was national director of Educators of the Hearing Impaired, and helped set up the Saskatchewan hearing aid plan.

She now teaches speech reading in low cost housing projects, works with immigrants and children at the Saskatoon Open Door Society. She works with refugees and is involved with amateur theatre, seniors and the library.

Mr. Speaker, on Sunday, October 6, I had the pleasure and the honour to be in West St. Paul, a rural municipality of my riding of Selkirk-Red River, to participate in the celebration of the 50th anniversary of Rivercrest.

Rivercrest is an area settled under the Veterans' Land Act. All of the original 56 residents were veterans of World War II and they were given the option to buy a home in Rivercrest with a small down payment and a government loan.

I would like to say a special thank you to the rural municipality of West St. Paul and the Rivercrest Community Club executive for recognizing our veterans by renaming Rivercrest Park to Veterans Park.

Mr. Speaker, community groups that provide assistance to the unemployed in my riding of Bourassa are upset at the funding cutbacks by the Department of Human Resources Development. In the greater Montreal area, the unemployment rate continues to climb.

The groups hardest hit are women, young people and immigrants. Growing numbers of clients and ever decreasing funding are forcing many organizations to close their doors, and leaving others in serious financial difficulty.

Mr. Speaker, yesterday the Minister of Finance told Canadians that the federal government will not be borrowing any new money in the markets and the process of restoring policy sovereignty to Canada has begun.

He failed to remind Canadians that the roll-over of the still massive existing public debt will require foreign investor participation. Neither did he recognize that Canadian investors will tend to use the same benchmarks as investors do in any sophisticated market to judge the risk and return on Canadian instruments relative to other markets. If these investors perceive that Canada's fiscal consolidation is missing the mark, they may well opt for foreign instruments, leading to higher borrowing costs in Canada.

The Minister of Finance has used illusion and carefully chosen words to bamboozle Canadians into thinking that Canada's debt is in great shape. It is not.

Mr. Speaker, as president of the Canada-Portugal Friendship Group I welcome to Canada the Secretary of State for Portuguese Communities, Mr. José Lello.

Portuguese explorers arrived in North America nearly 500 years ago. Since the establishment of their community, which numbers 500,000 today, Canadians of Portuguese origin have and continue to make a great contribution to the social, political and economic fabric of Canada's mosaic.

Our common membership in the United Nations, NATO, the OSCE and the OECD as well as recent commercial and technological links have strengthened Canada-Portugal relations.

This morning, with the member for Hull and the President of the Treasury Board, I attended the inauguration of a monument to all people of Portuguese origin in Hull. I will, if I may, cite the extract

from a poem by Jorge de Sena that is inscribed on the plaque. It reads: "I can only be from the land where I was born. Even though I belong to the world-".

I invite all my colleagues to come and meet the minister of state in the Commonwealth Room after Question Period this afternoon.

Mr. Speaker, October 15 to 19 is Mental Illness Awareness Week in Canada. One out of five Canadians, six million people, will suffer from mental illness at some time in their lives.

In recognition of Mental Illness Awareness Week the Canadian Psychiatric Association and several other associations have joined together in an effort to remove stereotypes and misconceptions related to mental illness. They have initiated a national education campaign to help people identify the symptoms of mental illness and to better understand them.

The impact of mental illness extends beyond the sufferers, affecting friends, family members and society at large. Mental illness is the second leading cause of admissions to hospitals of those 20 to 44 years of age.

With proper care including medication, psychotherapy, self-help and support groups, most cases can be successfully treated. I ask that hon. members join me in supporting Mental Illness Awareness Week.

Bernard PatryParliamentary Secretary to Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development

Mr. Speaker, today, October 10, has been designated world mental health day. In Canada, the Canadian Mental Health Association has decided to dedicate this day to the prevention and detection of nervous breakdowns.

Fifty-four early detection centres and a 1-800 number have been set up in order to give those at risk or wishing to know more about this illness direct access to the services of professionals.

A recently published report by the World Health Organization predicts that, by 2020, nervous breakdowns will be the second largest health problem on the planet.

Given the extent of the anticipated phenomenon, it is fortunate that such initiatives are being taken to identify those already suffering from nervous breakdowns and to make us aware of the associated problems.

Mr. Speaker, this week is family week, and the government has forgotten families.

First, the government pays lip service to family concerns and throws money into short term job creation programs for youth to look good on paper. To make matters worse, that money is drawn on the country's battered credit, already at nearly $600 billion in taxpayer dollars.

Now, after saying there would be no GST on books in its election promises, the government is still going ahead with a new 15 per cent tax on reading materials which will take effect April 1 unless the Atlantic provinces are prepared to bite the bullet and swallow the 8 per cent additional tax as premier of Nova Scotia, John Savage, said he is prepared to do.

The Prime Minister wants credit for this? When is the government going to keep its word and remove the GST on reading materials? I remind the Prime Minister of his promise to remove GST on reading materials. I remind the Deputy Prime Minister, who said that books are a necessity.